2020-05-08 — Exercise? Check. +1

Day 1 is in the books. 😎

It wasn’t much… just 10 minutes of cardio (running around the back parking area picking up sticks that get run over by the lawnmower and throwing them into the huge branch pile), but 10 minutes is 10 more than I’ve done in a long time, and I don’t need to start big. I have enough big life changes happening all at once: I’ll settle for reasonable progress today. 10 minutes today. 11 tomorrow. Sundays off. 12 Monday, 13, Tuesday, and by the end of the month, I’ll be at 30 minutes of good cardio a day.

That’ll be fantastic.

The carrying and chopping of would and rocks can double as weight lifting too, so I’ll get weight and cardio training via the day’s servicize routine.

Other than the cardio, today has been nutty. I’ve been absolutely slammed with people calling wanting help, and I’ve lost a lot of the jobs because I couldn’t get to them in time.

I went to the first job, and it was easy and went great (just a battery install and getting him started diagnosing his misfire issue), but I left my phone on the cowling of his car (the plastic piece between the windshield and the hood, and he left so quickly that though I was only a block away when I realized I didn’t have my phone, he was gone. I didn’t have his number anywhere but in my phone, and I had people waiting for me, and all the info was on my phone 😬.

I’m dead in the water without that phone.

Anyway… with him having driven away and not knowing his number to just borrow a cell phone and call, I had to get super creative. My brain was totally shot, so the only phone number that I could even pull out of my overwhelmed, overtaxed, overworked, and overstressed brain was my aunt’s landline in West Seattle, WA.

But guess what?!?! My mom (I couldn’t even pull her number out of my brain, as worn out as I am) happened to be at the house in West Seattle at the time, so when I borrowed a cell number and called, she answered, and that got me started. I walked her through logging into the service that I use as my CRM, and she was able to, but I hadn’t yet entered the phone number for that customer, so unfortunately, that didn’t help.

I asked her to call my sister Heather, so she could log into our T-Mobile call and text history, and she could look up the numbers of the peeps I’d been texting this morning. That she did, and eventually we were able to figure out which number it was, and I was able to get a hold of him. He had been driving down the freeway headed to Little Rock, AR (about 4 hours away!). Fortunately, I caught him while he was still within the geographical area that I normally cover. He hadn’t heard my phone when I asked the people who’s phone I borrowed to call my phone earlier because the phone was just sitting there on the outside of the car at the base of the windshield–hitchhiking.

Once I found his number and called him, he retrieved off the front of his car and dropped it off with the manager of the Autozone in that town (someone I know fairly well in a business relationship context), so I was able to make a 60-minute round-trip drive to get my now smashed-screen-but-at-least-functional-enough-to-make-it-through-the-work-day phone. That caused a pretty good hit in the day (in total, I probably lost two hours of work time?) and I had to push off at least one job because of it, but… I have the phone, and that saved the day!

Fortunately, I tend to multitask fairly well and don’t sit idle, so in the meantime while trying to get this resolved, I got my work vehicle cleaned out and organized a good bit (trying to find the phone at first), and I was able to connect with a friend who’s a nurse in Washington who’s running low on face masks and has pretty bad asthma. I contacted one of my mom’s friends to see if she knew where I could get some (she’s an ER nurse), and she just happened to have stumbled upon some and was happy to give them to me! So that was cool. I’ll ship those out to my friend in DC.

Anyway, so… that was a super crazy morning. The next job was another battery job, this time for a Mini Cooper, and I thought my $3000 scan tool could handle the battery reset, and it could have, but it couldn’t handle the fact that the gentleman bought a different size battery, and the car had to be reprogrammed, so the Intelligent Battery system would work properly. Nearest Mini dealership is four hours away, and even though the battery is made by BMW, they said they couldn’t even program the battery system.

I know, right? Goodness. 😶

Anyway, I reset the battery, but I wasn’t able to reprogram the IBS to have the new CCA and AH ratings. Fortunately, the customer was okay with it, so though I spent 30 minutes or more just trying to figure that part of the job out, at least it ended well enough with a happy customer.

After that, I raced to two more jobs, one where they’d tried to do the brakes themselves but had put one of the pads on backwards and ended up ruining their brand new rotor and brake pad, and one where the kid had driven his truck on super bad wheel bearings and had blown one of them completely out. If it were’t for the fact it was a 4WD, he might well have lost the wheel altogether. I was able to give him some perspective on what needed to happen, so he’s thinking it over. Just the parts themselves are nearly $400, so he’s taking the night to decide what to do. Very high mileage truck with thousands of dollars worth of repairs that ought to be done. I let him know how to do it DIY, though, so we’ll see what he decides to do.

After that is when I picked up the N95 face masks from my mom’s friend in Pea Ridge, and then I headed to what would end up being my last job of the day, a brake job for someone in the LDS branch I used to attend. Firestone had told him that the rotors were cracked, and that he needed knew pads and rotors. The rotors weren’t cracked. Just casting marks, I think is what they were, but definitely not cracks. All he needed was pads and his guide pins greased… easy peasy, so I did only that, but in his taillight bulb for him, and that was that.

So many calls today. Sooooo many. It was crazy. I’m glad to have David back tomorrow. It’s rough being down a man. Ugh!

After that, I went home (About 10 p.m. ish), and to my surprise, I got a stimulus check. One of my first thoughts was, is this something I need to thumb my nose at the government and tear up the check because I don’t approve of what they’re doing, or do I just go ahead and cash it?

I wasn’t sure what to do, so I called one of my brothers because I know he’s usually better plugged in to what’s actually happening, and he explained that though he wouldn’t have voted for it, it was a tax credit and not a redistribution of wealth, and as a taxpayer, one of the ones who pays more into the system then he gets back out in benefits, I’d guess, we just go ahead and cash it.

So… that’s what I’ll do, though they might take it back from me next year. I guess we’ll see.

Once I got home, I had a good conversation with my nephew, and now here I am. It just rolled over 12:02 a.m., and I’m almost done (with the journal entry at least). I have my work schedule and everything to go over for tomorrow still (sigh).

So tired, but not falling asleep like other nights writing in this thing.

A little concerned about my aunt. She went into the ER today with a fever and super high blood sugar. She had a fall last night, and nobody found her for a few hours. Hoping that’s what caused the fever and not a return of the foot infection that’s threatening amputation.

Tough stuff. I’ve gotta get out there to visit her one of these days soon. But nothing will happen while Washington is still on the lockdown it’s on.

Anyway, it’s time for bed. One more step forward in the progress.

#1. I’m grateful to be able to write a number 1 next to the daily exercise box on the list of things I’m working on right now and keeping track of for the time being. So we’re sitting at 33, 41, 32, 6, and 1.

Progress.

#2. I’m grateful that though my phone screen was much more smashed, it was able to get me through the day today, so I didn’t lose my other jobs and have lots of angry customers.

#3. I’m grateful that T-Mobile keep a record of whom I’m calling and texting. I’d have been hosed today, otherwise. And thanks, to my mother and my sister Heather rescuing this little dude’s butt.

#4. I’m grateful that even though I lost quite a bit of time today and had to postpone a goo job, I was able to still do well on the day, in general.

#5. I’m grateful that my ulnar nerves are calming down at least a little bit. They’re still letting me know that they’re very much present, but at least they’re not hurting anymore like the were for a handful of days. I do need to get this figured out soon. If I were my wife or child or good friend or family member, I’d be like “get your butt to the doctor.”

I’m not very good at being good to myself like I am for others. I’ve gotta learn, or one day it’ll be me in the ER or with permanent damage (if I don’t already have permanent nerve damage with those nerves.

Off to bed, my lovelies. It’s now 12:13, and I still have a schedule to work out for tomorrow.

(sigh)

So tired I couldn’t get back through this to make sure it’s decent.

Lift The World.

~ stephen